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.\"     @(#)column.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/column/column.1,v 1.16 2010/12/11 08:32:16 joel Exp $
.\"
.Dd July 29, 2004
.Dt COLUMN 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm column
.Nd columnate lists
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl tx
.Op Fl c Ar columns
.Op Fl s Ar sep
.Op Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility formats its input into multiple columns.
Rows are filled before columns.
Input is taken from
.Ar file
operands, or, by default, from the standard input.
Empty lines are ignored.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl c
Output is formatted for a display
.Ar columns
wide.
.It Fl s
Specify a set of characters to be used to delimit columns for the
.Fl t
option.
.It Fl t
Determine the number of columns the input contains and create a table.
Columns are delimited with whitespace, by default, or with the characters
supplied using the
.Fl s
option.
Useful for pretty-printing displays.
.It Fl x
Fill columns before filling rows.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
The
.Ev COLUMNS , LANG , LC_ALL
and
.Ev LC_CTYPE
environment variables affect the execution of
.Nm
as described in
.Xr environ 7 .
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Dl (printf \&"PERM LINKS OWNER GROUP SIZE MONTH DAY \&"\ \&;\ \&\e
.Dl printf \&"HH:MM/YEAR NAME\en\&"\ \&;\ \&\e
.Dl ls -l \&| sed 1d) \&| column -t
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr colrm 1 ,
.Xr ls 1 ,
.Xr paste 1 ,
.Xr sort 1
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Bx 4.3 Reno .
.Sh BUGS
Input lines are limited to
.Dv LINE_MAX
(2048) bytes in length.
